Episode: Violence and the Bible – What Do We Do With It?
🧭 Episode Summary
Violence is everywhere in the Bible—and for many, it’s one of the most difficult aspects of scripture to reconcile with the idea of a loving God.
In this episode, John explores one of the most pressing and personal questions facing modern readers of the Bible:
What do we do with the violence in scripture—and what does it mean for us today?
Prompted by a recent discussion group and unfolding global events, this episode wrestles with:
• Whether violence is ever justified
• The ethics of war, self-defense, and state power
• How ancient texts have been used—and misused—to justify modern violence
Rather than offering easy answers, this conversation leans into the tension, drawing on biblical scholarship, theology, and ethical philosophy to better understand what the Bible is—and what it is not.
📚 Scholars & Works Referenced
🧠 Foundational Biblical & Ethical Scholarship
• Peter Enns — How the Bible Actually Works
→ Argues that the Bible reflects the perspectives of ancient people trying to understand God, rather than functioning as a rulebook dictated from heaven.
• Greg Boyd — The Crucifixion of the Warrior God
→ Proposes that violent portrayals of God in the Old Testament are refracted through human understanding and ultimately point toward the nonviolent revelation of God in Jesus.
• Eric A. Seibert — Disturbing Divine Behavior
→ Explores troubling depictions of God in scripture and argues that not all portrayals of God in the Bible should be accepted as morally authoritative.
• John J. Collins — Does the Bible Justify Violence?
→ Examines how biblical texts have historically been used to justify violence and urges careful, contextual interpretation.
• Miroslav Volf — Exclusion and Embrace
→ Reflects on violence, justice, and reconciliation in light of human conflict and the Christian call to forgiveness.
🧠 Ethical & Philosophical Perspectives
• Jonathan Sacks — Essays on Ethics
→ Engages deeply with moral questions surrounding violence, responsibility, and the misuse of religious texts.
• Stanley Hauerwas — The Peaceable Kingdom
→ Advocates for a distinctly Christian ethic rooted in nonviolence and the teachings of Jesus.
• Reinhold Niebuhr — Moral Man and Immoral Society
→ Explores the tension between personal ethics and collective political responsibility, including the justification of force.
💬 Join the Conversation
What do you think?
Is violence ever justified? How do you interpret the difficult passages in scripture?
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00:10 --> 00:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the deconstruction as podcast.
00:14 --> 00:15 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm your host John Williamson.
00:15 --> 00:18 [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome back for another special deep dive episode.
00:18 --> 00:23 [SPEAKER_00]: One that I've been sitting on for a little while and felt like a really appropriate time.
00:23 --> 00:26 [SPEAKER_00]: Before we get into that, I apologize for my horse voice.
00:27 --> 00:27 [SPEAKER_00]: I
00:27 --> 00:33 [SPEAKER_00]: was seeing very loudly along to a band ace to dig back in the day called Taxi Ride.
00:33 --> 00:37 [SPEAKER_00]: So any of my Australian listeners probably know who Taxi Ride is.
00:39 --> 00:39 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, great harmony.
00:39 --> 00:43 [SPEAKER_00]: So check it out if you don't remember who they, who they are.
00:44 --> 00:45 [SPEAKER_00]: Anyway,
00:45 --> 00:48 [SPEAKER_00]: There are certain topics that, um, never really go away.
00:48 --> 00:56 [SPEAKER_00]: They just sit beneath the surface, sort of waiting, and every once in a while something happens at forces them right back into the center of the conversation.
00:56 --> 00:57 [SPEAKER_00]: And for me, this is one of those moments.
00:58 --> 01:03 [SPEAKER_00]: Because if we're being honest, violence is one of the biggest questions people have about the Bible that comes up all the time.
01:04 --> 01:08 [SPEAKER_00]: What do we do with a secret text that is at times deeply violent?
01:08 --> 01:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Not just stories about violence, but passages where violence seems commanded, justified and even celebrated.
01:14 --> 01:15 [SPEAKER_00]: What are we supposed to do with that?
01:16 --> 01:19 [SPEAKER_00]: And maybe even more pressing, what are we supposed to do with that now?
01:20 --> 01:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Because this isn't just an abstract theological debate.
01:24 --> 01:27 [SPEAKER_00]: And actually a few weeks ago, I was sitting with a group from my church.
01:27 --> 01:28 [SPEAKER_00]: We call it second table.
01:29 --> 01:34 [SPEAKER_00]: It's a space where once a month, one of us brings a topic, and we just sort of wrestle with it together.
01:35 --> 01:40 [SPEAKER_00]: Not in pursuit of answers necessarily because sometimes you just don't just aren't any.
01:40 --> 01:45 [SPEAKER_00]: But at least wrestle with it and get different perspectives and last month, it was my turn.
01:46 --> 01:50 [SPEAKER_00]: And I chose a question that felt important, but honestly, a little theoretical at the time.
01:51 --> 01:53 [SPEAKER_00]: And that question is, is violence ever justified?
01:54 --> 01:55 [SPEAKER_00]: What about self-defense?
01:55 --> 01:57 [SPEAKER_00]: What about protecting your family?
01:57 --> 01:59 [SPEAKER_00]: What about defending your country?
01:59 --> 02:01 [SPEAKER_00]: What does the Bible actually say about violence?
02:01 --> 02:07 [SPEAKER_00]: And then just weeks later, the country I live in, the United States, entered into a war with Iran.
02:07 --> 02:11 [SPEAKER_00]: Under circumstances that had best raised serious questions.
02:11 --> 02:14 [SPEAKER_00]: And suddenly, that conversation wasn't theoretical anymore.
02:14 --> 02:15 [SPEAKER_00]: It was real.
02:16 --> 02:20 [SPEAKER_00]: Because when bombs fall and rhetoric rises, we're forced to ask harder questions.
02:20 --> 02:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Is war ever justifiable?
02:23 --> 02:27 [SPEAKER_00]: If the people in power are unjust, for example, is it justifiable then?
02:27 --> 02:33 [SPEAKER_00]: What do we do with the reality of civilian casualties with children caught in the crossfire, for example?
02:34 --> 02:35 [SPEAKER_00]: Is that ever acceptable?
02:36 --> 02:41 [SPEAKER_00]: And if we're people who take the Bible seriously, how do we reconcile all of this with the text we've inherited?
02:42 --> 02:44 [SPEAKER_00]: And so that's what this episode is about.
02:45 --> 02:50 [SPEAKER_00]: Not easy answers, not simplistic takes, but an honest grounded look at violence in the Bible.
02:51 --> 02:57 [SPEAKER_00]: What it says, what it doesn't say and how thoughtful scholars and theologians
02:57 --> 03:00 [SPEAKER_00]: And before we dive in, I know that was kind of heavy.
03:01 --> 03:06 [SPEAKER_00]: But before we dive in just a quick note, we just launched a brand new Patreon.
03:06 --> 03:08 [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm really excited about what we're building there.
03:08 --> 03:17 [SPEAKER_00]: There's already some exclusive content up, including some research materials, some deeper dive videos into some of these topics that we've covered.
03:17 --> 03:20 [SPEAKER_00]: in a little more depth with some materials.
03:20 --> 03:29 [SPEAKER_00]: So if you are just having a discussion with friends or significant other or leading a Bible study, they're very useful for that sort of thing.
03:29 --> 03:33 [SPEAKER_00]: There's some visual aids and some study guide materials there.
03:34 --> 03:36 [SPEAKER_00]: And
03:36 --> 03:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Research materials and that sort of thing.
03:38 --> 03:45 [SPEAKER_00]: So if you want to go further, there's a lot of good stuff there along with a lot of other packages and it doesn't have to be a lot.
03:45 --> 03:56 [SPEAKER_00]: Like if you can donate a dollar that helps go a long way and helps us with things like, you know, the editing software that we use and the subscriptions that we use for the different things that we.
03:56 --> 03:58 [SPEAKER_00]: have to use to bring these podcasts together.
03:58 --> 04:00 [SPEAKER_00]: And if patrons on your thing, that's okay.
04:00 --> 04:01 [SPEAKER_00]: There are other ways to support the shows.
04:01 --> 04:04 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, we've got a bunch of new merch up in the shop.
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04:20 --> 04:21 [SPEAKER_00]: So.
04:21 --> 04:22 [SPEAKER_00]: No, said there.
04:22 --> 04:22 [SPEAKER_00]: All right.
04:23 --> 04:30 [SPEAKER_00]: Let's get into it and again, this is going to be probably a little heavier one, but I think an important conversation to have.
04:32 --> 04:33 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, and one more thing.
04:33 --> 04:43 [SPEAKER_00]: I also want to list out and I'll have this in the show notes as well, but the list of books and scholars that I reference throughout this episode.
04:43 --> 04:47 [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's important to note that I myself am no biblical scholar.
04:47 --> 04:49 [SPEAKER_00]: and so these ideas are not my own.
04:49 --> 04:58 [SPEAKER_00]: These are certainly ideas that I have pulled for people who have spent lifetimes studying this very topic and kind of working through it.
04:58 --> 05:11 [SPEAKER_00]: And so Jonathan Sachs, Rabbi, Lord Rabbi, Jonathan Sachs, who I've referenced on the podcast quite a bit, it's got a book that is terrific and it's really one of the top books out there on this topic of violence in the Bible.
05:11 --> 05:13 [SPEAKER_00]: It's called Not in God's Name.
05:13 --> 05:18 [SPEAKER_00]: I know there's another book that I reference a lot that I love by him called Essays on Ethics.
05:19 --> 05:20 [SPEAKER_00]: It's another good one to check out.
05:21 --> 05:25 [SPEAKER_00]: Also, there are a few others that I will reference throughout as well.
05:26 --> 05:32 [SPEAKER_00]: Obviously, Rabbi Sachs gives sort of the Jewish perspective, especially on what we call the Old Testament.
05:33 --> 05:43 [SPEAKER_00]: There's also John J. Collins, who is a biblical scholar, specifically the Hebrew Bible.
05:44 --> 05:48 [SPEAKER_00]: There's also Eric A. Sebert, Christian theology and Old Testament is his specialty.
05:49 --> 06:00 [SPEAKER_00]: A couple of things, a couple of books by him out there that are worth checking out the violence of Scripture overcoming the Old Testament's troubling legacy and disturbing divine behavior troubling Old Testament images of God.
06:01 --> 06:05 [SPEAKER_00]: Another one is a book by Reneged Rard, Violence and the Sacred.
06:07 --> 06:14 [SPEAKER_00]: And lastly, a great book by Francesca Stavicopoulou called God and Anatomy one.
06:14 --> 06:15 [SPEAKER_00]: So check those out.
06:15 --> 06:20 [SPEAKER_00]: I will again have those all listed in the show notes that you can reference.
06:21 --> 06:23 [SPEAKER_00]: Without further ado, let's get into it.
06:25 --> 06:30 [SPEAKER_00]: A city brought down and then wiped out men, women, children, everything.
06:31 --> 06:36 [SPEAKER_00]: And then, Jesus, love your enemies, turn the other cheek, plus those who curse you.
06:36 --> 06:38 [SPEAKER_00]: So what are we supposed to do with that?
06:39 --> 06:44 [SPEAKER_00]: What do we do with a sacred text that contains both divine violence and radical non-violence?
06:45 --> 06:46 [SPEAKER_00]: Is the Bible violent?
06:46 --> 06:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Is it misunderstood?
06:47 --> 06:49 [SPEAKER_00]: Is it evolving?
06:50 --> 06:54 [SPEAKER_00]: Or have we been reading it wrong the whole time?
06:54 --> 06:59 [SPEAKER_00]: Because the truth is, the Bible doesn't give us a simple answer as usual for us trading.
06:59 --> 07:00 [SPEAKER_00]: I know.
07:00 --> 07:02 [SPEAKER_00]: It gives us something much harder.
07:02 --> 07:04 [SPEAKER_00]: It gives us the struggle.
07:05 --> 07:08 [SPEAKER_00]: And if we're going to have an honest conversation about the Bible, we have to start here.
07:09 --> 07:13 [SPEAKER_00]: The violence isn't something critics are projecting onto the text, it's already there.
07:14 --> 07:15 [SPEAKER_00]: And it's not buried.
07:16 --> 07:20 [SPEAKER_00]: It's not hidden in obscure corners, it's right there on the surface.
07:21 --> 07:23 [SPEAKER_00]: In the book of Joshua, we read about the Fall of Jericho.
07:24 --> 07:29 [SPEAKER_00]: The walls collapse, and what follows isn't just victory, it is total destruction.
07:29 --> 07:38 [SPEAKER_00]: To quote Joshua, chapter 6, verse 21, they devoted the city to the Lord, destroying with the sword everything living in it.
07:39 --> 07:41 [SPEAKER_00]: Men, women, children.
07:43 --> 07:49 [SPEAKER_00]: And then in, for Samuel 15, the language becomes even more direct, more difficult to explain away.
07:50 --> 07:58 [SPEAKER_00]: Now go and strike Amalek, do not spare them, kill both, man and woman, child and infant.
07:58 --> 08:05 [SPEAKER_00]: These aren't just accounts of ancient warfare, they're framed as divine instruction, as something God wanted.
08:06 --> 08:14 [SPEAKER_00]: And it's not just in the historical narratives you find it in the Psalms, raw emotional prayers written in the aftermath of trauma and exile.
08:15 --> 08:22 [SPEAKER_00]: For example, Psalm 137, Happy is the one who ceases your infants and dashes them against the rocks.
08:23 --> 08:26 [SPEAKER_00]: That's uncomfortable, and it's supposed to be.
08:27 --> 08:31 [SPEAKER_00]: because this is what grief sounds like when it hasn't been cleaned up yet.
08:32 --> 08:36 [SPEAKER_00]: And then, when we get to the new testament, the tension doesn't just disappear.
08:37 --> 08:45 [SPEAKER_00]: In the book of Acts and Anias and Safira lie, and Fall Dead, a moment that feels sudden, severe.
08:46 --> 08:49 [SPEAKER_00]: And in Revelation, we're back in the language of violence.
08:50 --> 08:57 [SPEAKER_00]: But here's something important needs to be said, something that we've talked about on the podcast before, that Revelation isn't a newspaper headline about the future.
08:58 --> 09:09 [SPEAKER_00]: It's a poca-liptic literature, poetry, symbol, a kind of resistance writing, meant to warn, to provoke, to pull back the curtain on systems of power and oppression.
09:10 --> 09:16 [SPEAKER_00]: And still, its imagery is filled with judgment, destruction, cosmic battle.
09:16 --> 09:25 [SPEAKER_00]: So let's be clear, this isn't a fringe issue, this isn't a handful of verses taken out of context, violence is part of the story.
09:26 --> 09:37 [SPEAKER_00]: And for a lot of people that creates a real tension, because if God is good, if God is just, if God is love, then what are we to do with this?
09:37 --> 09:41 [SPEAKER_00]: And this is what Theologians call the problem of divine violence.
09:42 --> 09:45 [SPEAKER_00]: A variation of a much older question, the problem of evil.
09:46 --> 09:50 [SPEAKER_00]: Except here, the question feels closer, more personal.
09:51 --> 09:56 [SPEAKER_00]: Not just why does God allow violence, but why does God sometimes seem to command it?
09:56 --> 10:07 [SPEAKER_00]: What do we do with the fact that the people who wrote these texts believe that he did?
10:08 --> 10:10 [SPEAKER_00]: because the Bible didn't emerge in a vacuum.
10:11 --> 10:15 [SPEAKER_00]: It was written in a world that by our standards was incredibly violent.
10:16 --> 10:27 [SPEAKER_00]: A world of small tribes and fragile survival where land meant life, where resources were limited, and where conflict wasn't the exception, it was the norm.
10:28 --> 10:29 [SPEAKER_00]: The great empires of the ancient world.
10:30 --> 10:35 [SPEAKER_00]: Asyria, Babylon, Egypt, they didn't just wage war, they perfected it.
10:36 --> 10:46 [SPEAKER_00]: Assyrian kings carved their victories into stone, boasting of cities burned, people impaled, entire populations carried off into exile.
10:47 --> 10:55 [SPEAKER_00]: Babylon would eventually do the same to Israel, destroying Jerusalem, leveling the temple, dragging a nation into captivity.
10:56 --> 10:59 [SPEAKER_00]: This wasn't unusual, it was how the world worked.
11:00 --> 11:03 [SPEAKER_00]: Every battle was in some sense, a battle of gods.
11:04 --> 11:06 [SPEAKER_00]: If your army won, your god was stronger.
11:07 --> 11:09 [SPEAKER_00]: If he lost, your god had been defeated.
11:09 --> 11:12 [SPEAKER_00]: That was the mental world the Bible was written into.
11:13 --> 11:17 [SPEAKER_00]: And in that world, violence wasn't usually questioned.
11:17 --> 11:20 [SPEAKER_00]: It was assumed, even expected.
11:21 --> 11:26 [SPEAKER_00]: So when we read these texts today, it's easy to ask, how could they think that this was okay?
11:27 --> 11:32 [SPEAKER_00]: But a better question might be, what kind of world were they trying to survive in?
11:33 --> 11:37 [SPEAKER_00]: Because for ancient Israel, these weren't abstract theological debates.
11:37 --> 11:41 [SPEAKER_00]: They were questions of identity, survival, existence.
11:43 --> 11:48 [SPEAKER_00]: And like other cultures around them, they told stories about God in ways that made sense of that world.
11:50 --> 11:58 [SPEAKER_00]: A God who fought for them, a God who protected them, a God who at times commanded them, even in war.
11:58 --> 12:06 [SPEAKER_00]: But here's where things start to get interesting, because while the Bible reflects that violent world, it doesn't always mirror it.
12:07 --> 12:10 [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, in some places, it quietly pushes back against it.
12:11 --> 12:14 [SPEAKER_00]: And maybe the most surprising place that happens is on the very first page.
12:16 --> 12:22 [SPEAKER_00]: If the Bible comes out of a violent world, you might expect it to begin with violence.
12:22 --> 12:28 [SPEAKER_00]: A war in the heavens, a clash of gods, a battle for control of the universe.
12:28 --> 12:31 [SPEAKER_00]: because that's how many ancient creation stories began.
12:31 --> 12:36 [SPEAKER_00]: An ancient Mesopotamia, there's a creation story called the Unuma Elish.
12:37 --> 12:43 [SPEAKER_00]: In it, the God-Martuk defeats a chaos monster named Tiamat, and creates the world from her body.
12:44 --> 12:48 [SPEAKER_00]: Creation, through conquest, order, through violence.
12:49 --> 12:52 [SPEAKER_00]: That was a familiar pattern in the ancient world.
12:53 --> 12:56 [SPEAKER_00]: But then you turn in Genesis and something unexpected happens.
12:57 --> 13:03 [SPEAKER_00]: There's no battle, no rival God, no cosmic struggle for dominance.
13:03 --> 13:05 [SPEAKER_00]: Instead, there's a voice.
13:06 --> 13:07 [SPEAKER_00]: Let there be light.
13:08 --> 13:08 [SPEAKER_00]: And there is.
13:08 --> 13:13 [SPEAKER_00]: Again and again, God speaks and creation unfolds.
13:14 --> 13:15 [SPEAKER_00]: Not through force, but through word.
13:17 --> 13:22 [SPEAKER_00]: In a world where power meant domination,
13:23 --> 13:25 [SPEAKER_00]: power as creativity.
13:26 --> 13:32 [SPEAKER_00]: Even the chaos, the deep, the, to home, isn't a rival to be defeated.
13:32 --> 13:34 [SPEAKER_00]: It offers no resistance.
13:34 --> 13:40 [SPEAKER_00]: God doesn't fight it, God simply orders it, and then there's humanity.
13:41 --> 13:48 [SPEAKER_00]: And many ancient myths humans are created as kind of an afterthought, or worse, as slaves to serve the gods.
13:49 --> 14:00 [SPEAKER_00]: But in Genesis, humans are made in the image of God, given dignity, given responsibility, given a place within creation, not beneath it.
14:01 --> 14:03 [SPEAKER_00]: It's a radically different version.
14:04 --> 14:10 [SPEAKER_00]: A world where creation doesn't begin in violence, but in intention, order, meaning.
14:11 --> 14:15 [SPEAKER_00]: And if Rabbi Jonathan Sachs is right, then that matters.
14:16 --> 14:20 [SPEAKER_00]: Because it suggests that violence is not foundational to reality.
14:22 --> 14:28 [SPEAKER_00]: It's not how the story starts, but it is part of how the story unfolds.
14:29 --> 14:33 [SPEAKER_00]: Because not long after this peaceful beginning, violence enters the picture.
14:34 --> 14:36 [SPEAKER_00]: Not from God, but from us.
14:38 --> 14:43 [SPEAKER_00]: If Genesis begins with a world ordered without violence, it doesn't stay that way for long.
14:44 --> 14:46 [SPEAKER_00]: Just a few chapters later, the story shifts.
14:47 --> 14:50 [SPEAKER_00]: Two brothers, you guys know the story, Kane and Abel.
14:51 --> 14:55 [SPEAKER_00]: One offering is accepted, the other is not, and something begins to take shape.
14:56 --> 15:01 [SPEAKER_00]: Jellacy, resentment, a sense that there isn't enough to go around.
15:02 --> 15:06 [SPEAKER_00]: That if God favors one, he must be rejecting the other.
15:06 --> 15:10 [SPEAKER_00]: and God speaks to Cane, sin is crouching at your door.
15:11 --> 15:13 [SPEAKER_00]: It desires to have you, but you must rule over it.
15:14 --> 15:16 [SPEAKER_00]: That's Genesis, 47.
15:16 --> 15:17 [SPEAKER_00]: It's a warning.
15:18 --> 15:21 [SPEAKER_00]: A moment where things could still go differently, but they don't.
15:23 --> 15:25 [SPEAKER_00]: Cane takes his brother into the field and kills him.
15:27 --> 15:29 [SPEAKER_00]: It's the first act of violence in the Bible.
15:30 --> 15:34 [SPEAKER_00]: And it doesn't come from God, it comes from us.
15:34 --> 15:39 [SPEAKER_00]: from rivalry, from comparison, from the belief that blessing is limited.
15:40 --> 15:45 [SPEAKER_00]: And the story doesn't stop there, violence doesn't just appear, it escalates.
15:45 --> 15:50 [SPEAKER_00]: A few generations later, there's a man named Lamek, and he says this.
15:51 --> 15:52 [SPEAKER_00]: I have killed a man for wounding me.
15:53 --> 16:01 [SPEAKER_00]: If Kane is avenged seven times, the Lamek 77 times, as Genesis chapter 4 verses 23 24.
16:01 --> 16:04 [SPEAKER_00]: So, violence multiplied.
16:06 --> 16:08 [SPEAKER_00]: What began as a single act becomes a pattern.
16:10 --> 16:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Until eventually the text says, the earth was filled with violence.
16:14 --> 16:16 [SPEAKER_00]: Genesis 6, verse 11.
16:18 --> 16:22 [SPEAKER_00]: filled, not just isolated incidents, not just moments, filled.
16:24 --> 16:28 [SPEAKER_00]: If violence enters the story through Cane, the Bible doesn't just leave it there.
16:29 --> 16:34 [SPEAKER_00]: It keeps returning to the same pattern, again, and again, and again.
16:36 --> 16:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Brothers, siblings, rivals, Isaac, and Ishmael, Jacob, and Issa, Joseph, and his brothers.
16:47 --> 16:51 [SPEAKER_00]: Different stories, different outcomes, but the same underlying tension.
16:52 --> 16:53 [SPEAKER_00]: Who is chosen?
16:54 --> 16:55 [SPEAKER_00]: Who is favored?
16:55 --> 16:58 [SPEAKER_00]: And what does that mean for everyone else?
16:59 --> 17:03 [SPEAKER_00]: Rabbi Jonathan Sachs argues that this is one of the central themes of the Bible.
17:04 --> 17:10 [SPEAKER_00]: That violence is often rooted, not in hatred alone, but in the fear that there isn't enough to go around.
17:11 --> 17:15 [SPEAKER_00]: Not enough blessing, not enough love, not enough God.
17:16 --> 17:18 [SPEAKER_00]: It's what he calls the problem of sibling rivalry.
17:19 --> 17:23 [SPEAKER_00]: The belief that if one is chosen, the other must be rejected.
17:24 --> 17:27 [SPEAKER_00]: That if God is for us, he must be against them.
17:28 --> 17:29 [SPEAKER_00]: Sound familiar?
17:30 --> 17:36 [SPEAKER_00]: We talked about this not too long ago when we talked about dualism and the problems of tribalism.
17:37 --> 17:40 [SPEAKER_00]: And according to Sachs, that belief is fuel violence for centuries.
17:41 --> 17:45 [SPEAKER_00]: Not just in the Bible, but in the world that followed.
17:45 --> 17:51 [SPEAKER_00]: Because once you believe that God's love is limited, it becomes something you have to defend, protect, even fight for.
17:52 --> 17:57 [SPEAKER_00]: And suddenly, violence can be justified in God's name.
17:58 --> 18:04 [SPEAKER_00]: But what's striking about the biblical text is that it doesn't always affirm that mindset.
18:05 --> 18:11 [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, in many of these stories, God refuses to play favorites in the way people expect.
18:11 --> 18:26 [SPEAKER_00]: Ishmael isn't abandoned, Isha is reconciled, Joseph forgives, again and again the story pushes back against the idea that one must be rejected for another to be loved.
18:27 --> 18:29 [SPEAKER_00]: And this is where Sacks reframes the problem.
18:30 --> 18:36 [SPEAKER_00]: The issue isn't that religion creates violence, it's that religion is often used to justify it.
18:37 --> 18:48 [SPEAKER_00]: especially when we read these texts as if God's love is scarce, as if blessing is a competition, as if being chosen means someone else must be excluded.
18:49 --> 18:51 [SPEAKER_00]: But what if that's not the point of these stories?
18:52 --> 18:55 [SPEAKER_00]: What if they're not endorsing rivalry, but exposing it?
18:56 --> 18:59 [SPEAKER_00]: Naming it, warning us about it.
18:59 --> 19:08 [SPEAKER_00]: But because if that's true, then the violence we see in the Bible must not be a blueprint to follow, but a mirror showing us something about ourselves.
19:10 --> 19:20 [SPEAKER_00]: If the story of the Hebrew Bible wrestles with violence, the New Testament doesn't ignore that tension, it steps directly into it, and at the center of that moment is Jesus.
19:21 --> 19:25 [SPEAKER_00]: Because when Jesus begins to teach, He doesn't avoid the hard parts of the tradition.
19:26 --> 19:28 [SPEAKER_00]: He engages them.
19:28 --> 19:30 [SPEAKER_00]: And then, he reframes them.
19:31 --> 19:38 [SPEAKER_00]: You have heard it said, but I say to you, love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you.
19:38 --> 19:39 [SPEAKER_00]: Turn the other cheek.
19:41 --> 19:44 [SPEAKER_00]: If someone takes your coat, give them your cloak as well.
19:46 --> 19:55 [SPEAKER_00]: This isn't just moral advice, it's a direct challenge to cycles of violence in retaliation, and a world shaped by honor and revenge.
19:56 --> 20:04 [SPEAKER_00]: Jesus introduces something radically different, enemy love, not as an ideal, but as a command.
20:05 --> 20:14 [SPEAKER_00]: And maybe even more striking, he doesn't just teach it, he embodies it.
20:14 --> 20:16 [SPEAKER_00]: When he's accused, he doesn't defend himself.
20:17 --> 20:20 [SPEAKER_00]: When he's executed, he forgives.
20:21 --> 20:24 [SPEAKER_00]: Father forgives them, for they know not what they do.
20:26 --> 20:27 [SPEAKER_00]: It's a moment that forces a question.
20:28 --> 20:33 [SPEAKER_00]: If this is what God looks like, what do we do with everything that came before?
20:35 --> 20:44 [SPEAKER_00]: Because for many Christians, Jesus becomes the lens, the way of interpreting the rest of the Bible.
20:44 --> 20:59 [SPEAKER_00]: but rereading it, through the life and teachings of Christ, which leads to a deeper question, where these earlier texts, describing God as he truly is, or describing how people understood him at the time.
21:01 --> 21:05 [SPEAKER_00]: And if it's the second, then maybe the story isn't static.
21:06 --> 21:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe it's moving, growing, from violence towards something else, something more complete
21:16 --> 21:21 [SPEAKER_00]: If Jesus reframes violence, the question becomes, what do his followers do with that?
21:22 --> 21:25 [SPEAKER_00]: Because the early Christians didn't live in a vacuum either.
21:26 --> 21:32 [SPEAKER_00]: They lived under the Roman Empire, a world defined by power, by hierarchy, by force.
21:33 --> 21:38 [SPEAKER_00]: The same world that executed Jesus, now surrounded his followers.
21:39 --> 21:41 [SPEAKER_00]: And at first, their response was clear.
21:42 --> 21:43 [SPEAKER_00]: They didn't fight back.
21:44 --> 21:50 [SPEAKER_00]: Many of the earliest Christians refused military service, chose martyrdom over retaliation.
21:51 --> 21:53 [SPEAKER_00]: They took Jesus at his word.
21:54 --> 21:59 [SPEAKER_00]: Enemy love, nonviolence, suffering without resistance.
22:00 --> 22:02 [SPEAKER_00]: But over time, things changed.
22:03 --> 22:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Christianity moved from the margins to the center of power, from persecuted to protected,
22:14 --> 22:17 [SPEAKER_00]: And with that shift, came new questions.
22:18 --> 22:22 [SPEAKER_00]: What do you do with Jesus' teachings when you're no longer the oppressed?
22:22 --> 22:25 [SPEAKER_00]: But the one responsible for maintaining order.
22:26 --> 22:29 [SPEAKER_00]: This is where thinkers like Augustine began to wrestle with the problem.
22:30 --> 22:36 [SPEAKER_00]: Trying to reconcile Jesus' cult peace with the realities of governing a society.
22:37 --> 22:42 [SPEAKER_00]: And out of that tension, comes something called just war theory.
22:42 --> 22:52 [SPEAKER_00]: The idea that while violence is never ideal, it might be necessary under certain conditions to restrain evil, to protect the innocent, to preserve peace.
22:54 --> 22:57 [SPEAKER_00]: At the same time, another tradition continues alongside it.
22:58 --> 23:00 [SPEAKER_00]: One that refuses to make that compromise.
23:01 --> 23:05 [SPEAKER_00]: Groups who look at Jesus' words and take them literally.
23:05 --> 23:10 [SPEAKER_00]: No violence, no retaliation, and no exceptions.
23:10 --> 23:14 [SPEAKER_00]: from early Christian martyrs to later movements like the Antibaptists.
23:14 --> 23:16 [SPEAKER_00]: This thread never disappears.
23:17 --> 23:24 [SPEAKER_00]: It insists that the cross is not just something Jesus endured, but something His followers are called to embody.
23:26 --> 23:30 [SPEAKER_00]: And then there are modern perspectives that take yet another approach.
23:31 --> 23:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Seeing the Bible not as a fixed system of ethics but as a story of moral development, a trajectory.
23:38 --> 23:43 [SPEAKER_00]: from tribalism to justice, to mercy, to enemy love.
23:44 --> 23:49 [SPEAKER_00]: In that view, the violent passages aren't ignored, but they aren't the final word either.
23:50 --> 23:52 [SPEAKER_00]: They're part of a larger movement.
23:53 --> 23:56 [SPEAKER_00]: One that doesn't end in conquest, but in reconciliation.
23:57 --> 24:00 [SPEAKER_00]: And so within Christianity, there isn't just one answer.
24:01 --> 24:02 [SPEAKER_00]: There's a conversation.
24:03 --> 24:07 [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm going attempt to figure out what it means
24:09 --> 24:12 [SPEAKER_00]: At some point, you can't just study these texts.
24:12 --> 24:14 [SPEAKER_00]: You have to decide what to do with them.
24:15 --> 24:17 [SPEAKER_00]: Because the tension doesn't go away.
24:18 --> 24:23 [SPEAKER_00]: It follows you into how you read, how you believe, and how you live.
24:24 --> 24:27 [SPEAKER_00]: And eventually, you're left with a set of questions.
24:28 --> 24:31 [SPEAKER_00]: Questions the Bible itself never fully answers.
24:33 --> 24:39 [SPEAKER_00]: First question, did God actually command violence, or did people believe that he did?
24:40 --> 24:46 [SPEAKER_00]: Because if it's the first, then we're dealing with a God who sometimes uses violence.
24:46 --> 24:50 [SPEAKER_00]: But if it's the second, then we're dealing with something else entirely.
24:51 --> 24:56 [SPEAKER_00]: A record of human beings trying to understand God in the only categories they had.
24:58 --> 24:59 [SPEAKER_00]: Question 2
25:00 --> 25:04 [SPEAKER_00]: Are these texts describing what happened or prescribing what should happen?
25:05 --> 25:08 [SPEAKER_00]: Are they commands to follow or stories to wrestle with?
25:10 --> 25:11 [SPEAKER_00]: Question 3.
25:12 --> 25:15 [SPEAKER_00]: What does it actually mean to take the Bible seriously?
25:15 --> 25:20 [SPEAKER_00]: Does it mean reading everything literally, or does it mean engaging it with honesty?
25:21 --> 25:26 [SPEAKER_00]: In its historical context, it's literary form, it's moral trajectory.
25:27 --> 25:28 [SPEAKER_00]: Question 4.
25:29 --> 25:30 [SPEAKER_00]: And maybe the hardest question of all.
25:32 --> 25:35 [SPEAKER_00]: What kind of God do these texts ultimately point to?
25:35 --> 25:36 [SPEAKER_00]: A God of violence?
25:37 --> 25:39 [SPEAKER_00]: A God who permits it?
25:40 --> 25:43 [SPEAKER_00]: Or a God who is gradually leading people beyond it?
25:44 --> 25:48 [SPEAKER_00]: Because how you answer those questions shapes everything.
25:49 --> 25:52 [SPEAKER_00]: Not just how you read the Bible, but how you understand God.
25:53 --> 26:01 [SPEAKER_00]: Over time, people have developed different ways of holding this tension, not perfect answers, but frameworks.
26:02 --> 26:03 [SPEAKER_00]: Framework 1.
26:04 --> 26:05 [SPEAKER_00]: Context.
26:06 --> 26:09 [SPEAKER_00]: These texts come from a specific time and a specific world.
26:10 --> 26:16 [SPEAKER_00]: A world where violence was normal, expected, and where survival often depended on it.
26:17 --> 26:23 [SPEAKER_00]: Framework 2.
26:23 --> 26:31 [SPEAKER_00]: It moves from tribal conflict to prophetic calls for justice to Jesus command to love your enemies.
26:32 --> 26:33 [SPEAKER_00]: Framework 3.
26:34 --> 26:45 [SPEAKER_00]: Interpretive Responsibility As Rabbi Jonathan Sachs argues, the danger isn't the text alone, it's how we read it, how we apply it, how we use it.
26:46 --> 26:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Framework 4.
26:48 --> 26:49 [SPEAKER_00]: A lens.
26:49 --> 26:52 [SPEAKER_00]: For many Christians, Jesus becomes the lens.
26:52 --> 26:59 [SPEAKER_00]: The way of interpreting everything that came before, not rejecting the text, but re-reading it.
27:00 --> 27:03 [SPEAKER_00]: Framework 5, Human and Divine.
27:04 --> 27:13 [SPEAKER_00]: The Bible may not be a simple transcript of God's voice, but a conversation between divine revelation and human understanding.
27:14 --> 27:16 [SPEAKER_00]: None of these frameworks solve the problem completely.
27:17 --> 27:19 [SPEAKER_00]: They don't remove the tension.
27:19 --> 27:20 [SPEAKER_00]: but they do something else.
27:21 --> 27:23 [SPEAKER_00]: They give us a way to stay in the conversation.
27:24 --> 27:27 [SPEAKER_00]: Because maybe, the goal isn't to eliminate the tension.
27:28 --> 27:30 [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe, it's to take it seriously.
27:31 --> 27:34 [SPEAKER_00]: To wrestle with it, the same way the text itself does.
27:37 --> 27:39 [SPEAKER_00]: The question isn't whether the Bible contains violence.
27:39 --> 27:40 [SPEAKER_00]: It does.
27:41 --> 27:42 [SPEAKER_00]: The question is what we do with it.
27:43 --> 27:46 [SPEAKER_00]: Because these texts aren't just ancient history,
27:47 --> 27:50 [SPEAKER_00]: They're still being read, still being quoted, still being used.
27:51 --> 27:55 [SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes to heal, and sometimes to harm.
27:56 --> 28:06 [SPEAKER_00]: History has shown us what happens when violent passages are taken at face value, when they're stripped of context, when they're used to draw lines between us and them.
28:07 --> 28:17 [SPEAKER_00]: To justify exclusion, conflict, even war.
28:17 --> 28:19 [SPEAKER_00]: It resists that kind of certainty.
28:20 --> 28:23 [SPEAKER_00]: It holds tension, it preserves the struggle.
28:24 --> 28:27 [SPEAKER_00]: It begins with a God who creates without violence.
28:27 --> 28:29 [SPEAKER_00]: It tells stories of humans who introduce it.
28:30 --> 28:37 [SPEAKER_00]: It wrestles with it, across generations, and then, in Jesus, it confronts it.
28:38 --> 28:41 [SPEAKER_00]: Not with force, but with self-giving love.
28:42 --> 28:44 [SPEAKER_00]: And maybe that's the invitation.
28:44 --> 28:54 [SPEAKER_00]: Not to ignore the difficult parts, not to explain them away, but to take responsibility for how we read them, how we interpret them, how we live them out.
28:55 --> 29:00 [SPEAKER_00]: The Bible isn't just a story about God, it's a story about us.
29:01 --> 29:18 [SPEAKER_00]: about what we do with power, with fear, with the belief that there isn't enough to go around, and whether we continue that cycle, or choose something different, something harder, something better, something that looks a little more like love.
29:20 --> 29:20 [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for listening.